The Internet Archive (IA) went before a three-judge panel Friday to defend its open library's controlled digital lending (CDL) practices after book publishers last year won a lawsuit claiming that the archive's lending violated copyright law.
In the weeks ahead of IA's efforts to appeal that ruling, IA was forced to remove 500,000 books from its collection, shocking users. In an open letter to publishers, more than 30,000 readers, researchers, and authors begged for access to the books to be restored in the open library, claiming the takedowns dealt "a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others," who may not have access to a local library or feel "safe accessing the information they need in public."
[...] IA has argued that because copyright law is intended to provide equal access to knowledge, copyright law is better served by allowing IA's lending than by preventing it. They're hoping the judges will decide that CDL is fair use, reversing the lower court's decision and restoring access to books recently removed from the open library. But Gratz said there's no telling yet when that decision will come.
[...] McSherry seemed optimistic that the judges at least understood the stakes for IA readers, noting that fair use is "designed to ensure that copyright actually serves the public interest," not publishers'. Should the court decide otherwise, McSherry warned, the court risks allowing "a few powerful publishers" to "hijack the future of books."
When IA first appealed, Kahle put out a statement saying IA couldn't walk away from "a fight to keep library books available for those seeking truth in the digital age."
Previously on SoylentNews:
Internet Archive Forced to Remove 500,000 Books After Publishers' Court Win - 20240627
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As a result of book publishers successfully suing the Internet Archive (IA) last year, the free online library that strives to keep growing online access to books recently shrank by about 500,000 titles.
IA reported in a blog post this month that publishers abruptly forcing these takedowns triggered a "devastating loss" for readers who depend on IA to access books that are otherwise impossible or difficult to access.
To restore access, IA is now appealing, hoping to reverse the prior court's decision by convincing the US Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit that IA's controlled digital lending of its physical books should be considered fair use under copyright law. An April court filing shows that IA intends to argue that the publishers have no evidence that the e-book market has been harmed by the open library's lending, and copyright law is better served by allowing IA's lending than by preventing it.
[...]
IA will have an opportunity to defend its practices when oral arguments start in its appeal on June 28."Our position is straightforward; we just want to let our library patrons borrow and read the books we own, like any other library," Freeland wrote, while arguing that the "potential repercussions of this lawsuit extend far beyond the Internet Archive" and publishers should just "let readers read."
[...]
After publishers won an injunction stopping IA's digital lending, which "limits what we can do with our digitized books," IA's help page said, the open library started shrinking. While "removed books are still available to patrons with print disabilities," everyone else has been cut off, causing many books in IA's collection to show up as "Borrow Unavailable."
[...]
In an IA blog, one independent researcher called IA a "lifeline," while others claimed academic progress was "halted" or delayed by the takedowns."I understand that publishers and authors have to make a profit, but most of the material I am trying to access is written by people who are dead and whose publishers have stopped printing the material," wrote one IA fan from Boston.
[...]
In the open letter to publishers—which Techdirt opined "will almost certainly fall on extremely deaf ears"—the Internet Archive and its fans "respectfully" asked publishers "to restore access to the books" that were removed.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 03 2024, @03:08PM (8 children)
It's become publicly apparent that judges can just openly accept bribes and face no consequences, so I don't think arguments make a difference anymore.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aafcac on Wednesday July 03 2024, @04:31PM (6 children)
Clearly not, now that the SCOTUS has decided to completely ignore the plain language of the statutes they're ruling on. I mean, if January 6th doesn't represent a pretty clear attempt at obstructing the operations of the government, then I don't know what does. It's more or less exactly the sort of thing that should be criminalized as those people got their votes, the rest of us get ours as well. I don't personally care for the electoral college, but there were enough votes to overcome the right bias to the system to elect Biden.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ox0000 on Wednesday July 03 2024, @05:48PM (4 children)
Ah, but you see, this is where you make the tiniest of mistakes. If it was the other side, they'd come down hard upon them under the name of "law and order". It didn't/doesn't represent a clear attempt to obstruct the operations of the government because the clan that holds the current majority on SCOTUS belongs to was the perpetrator. After all, they are valiant freedom fighters in a patriotic struggle for the (soul of the) nation, whereas the other side are just evil and simple terrorists wanting only pain and destruction...
So repeat after me:
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday July 03 2024, @10:02PM (2 children)
You say that, but the other side hasn't done that and there's a pattern of one side being the dude that's doing it. It got particularly bad after SCOTUS appointment W to the presidency despite having lost both the electoral college and popular votes.
(Score: 2) by Ox0000 on Wednesday July 03 2024, @10:45PM (1 child)
Poe's Law strikes again... but really... troll mod?
If you read my comment, you'll realize that I'm saying the same and agreeing with your original post. I'm just giving you an explanation for why they ruled the way they ruled (and I agree with you that the ruling is idiotic): "it's our side, and therefore it's ok, but if we were in power and the other guys did it, we'd come down upon them with a banhammer so heavy, we could write a Nature article using the seismic data."
I'm just pointing out the stupidity of "nationalism" or "patriotism" as portrayed by the side that perpetrated January 6th and the stupid justifications that go through their heads while they are committing the act of insurrection.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aafcac on Wednesday July 03 2024, @11:43PM
I didn't mod you, but upon rereading, I clearly misunderstood you.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday July 08 2024, @07:33AM
I have to say, if you hadn't explained your viewpoint, I too would have wondered if you were mocking aafcac. The narrative of the plain speaking side versus the obstructing-government, insurrectionist criminals fits quite nicely into that propaganda template. My take on that is that normal law already covers any actual crimes from a protest during/against government functions like Electoral College voting. One doesn't need novel interpretations of law that will blow up in one's face later.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by khallow on Thursday July 04 2024, @02:05AM
My take of course is that the conditional is true and so is the consequent. Not sure how that affects the rest of your post.
There would have been enough such votes, January 6 protest or not. Thus fails the "pretty clear attempt at obstructing the operations of the government".
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04 2024, @01:46AM
https://www.theonion.com/clarence-thomas-torn-over-case-where-both-sides-offer-c-1851566812 [theonion.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2024, @03:13PM
No, copyright law was to make sure authors had a revenue stream to stimulate the production of more works
and expired after a sane period of time.
It is now a revenue stream for much much longer and locks in intellectual property rights for information cartels.
Library exceptions are something the cartels want to exterminate.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday July 03 2024, @05:28PM (1 child)
Would be nice, if it was a right. Would be nicer, if copyright didn't extend as far as it does!
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2024, @07:16PM
It's up to the voters to elect a congress that will fix that. Don't hold your breath
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2024, @07:06PM
If Whitey wants to display his privilege, he should have to pay dearly for doing so. Close all the libraries, shutter the Internet Archives, and start ponying up money to read stuff.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 03 2024, @10:56PM (3 children)
I like the Internet Archive, but this is the kind of trouble they court just by being an organization. Napster had the same problem. Bit Torrent has been much harder for copyright trolls to attack, but it too has some centralization that can be targeted. Copyright trolls evidently feel that attacking torrent sites isn't enough, they also pursue individuals. There's such things as Usenet's alt.bin groups, but that is so decentralized it is unfortunately all too easy to flood that with spam.
It is amazing how much easier copying has become. In the 1980s, it was floppy disks and paper copier machines. Also cassette and video tapes. And PKARC. Those were the first technologies that individuals could use to copy data mechanically. The printing press is a fantastic invention yet not nearly as accessible to individuals, not suited to the making of only a few copies. Today, copying is orders of magnitude easier, faster, more capacious, more various, and all around better than it was in the 1980s. Now individuals can use flash drives, terabytes of storage, and all kinds of formats and codecs and encodings such as zip, JPEG, mp3, Opus, MPEG4, AV1, LaTeX, EPUB, HTML, PDF, and UTF-8. And we have the Internet and WiFi. And, emulators such as MAME and DOSBox, and open recreations of much popular software, such as LibreOffice. And smartphones. Now in a few seconds, either by downloading or by flash drive, an individual can copy hundreds of e-books, or dozens of songs, or a movie, something that was not possible in the 1980s.
In the future (if we have one), we may have brain or body implants that make copying even more convenient, fast, and easy. It's hard to guess what will be possible, except that copyright law won't.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday July 04 2024, @09:35AM (2 children)
That implant will have an AI in it that charges the appropriate license fees every time you look at anything.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday July 04 2024, @01:49PM (1 child)
On the contrary, the AI will be capable of making a derivative with enough changes that copyright is not violated.
AI will also break what little skill based monopoly artists still have. Anyone will be able to direct AI to make a high quality realization of whatever they envision. No more need of a professional human sketch artist to draw the graphics for a graphics novel. Also can generate videos of good production quality, won't even need an animation studio such as Pixar, let alone recordings of live action. Whole lot more people will be able to do art themselves.
People already are making art, what with all these amateur vids of people playing around or working. Speedruns and high score runs of computer and arcade games. There's how-to videos for every somewhat common task imaginable. How to take apart laptops and smartphones to replace the batteries. How to fix a problem with a car or a home. How to fill out forms. How to cook all kinds of meals. Anyone can view all this without having to purchase a copy on some physical medium.
(Score: 2) by Ox0000 on Monday July 08 2024, @03:39PM
Only corporations will be allowed to create derivative works or run AIs. You will be "allowed" to pay for/subscribe to the dreck it generates.
What? You think that little people will have the ability to run AIs? What planet did you grow up on?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by DadaDoofy on Thursday July 04 2024, @10:37AM
"the takedowns dealt "a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people"
While they were on the subject of politics, funny how those "30,000 readers, researchers, and authors" somehow forgot to mention the blow it dealt to people afraid of being raped and murdered by the invading hordes of illegals.
(Score: 2) by ShovelOperator1 on Thursday July 04 2024, @11:23AM
I think there may be a solution, but it's quite unimaginable to start with it.
Currently there's no "objective truth" anymore. It's a post-truth what is in order - the currently binding narrative, feasible for some corporation, broadcasted by commercial news agencies. The "citizen journalism" is dead as a doornail, independent web is bound with law requirements, and hobbyists who want to exchange knowledge are forced to be locked in walled gardens of corporate publishing platforms like in some XIX century England. The fact that analogue libraries are still here is only because their working formula got stable before the "post-truth", and they still are subjected to hard censorship by direct actions (military or ideological censorship, visible at least in Europe) or indirect (removing books "too old" to keep).
An interesting thing Internet users can do against these corporate actions, is to roll up an active defense using the same post-truth mechanism. There is always some other post-truth, which will cause screeching and screaming of these governmental or corporation-based agents. This is what to be amplified and shared. And no, the truth will not be harmed. You just choose from one lie to the other lie, this more harmful for corporations.
Remember - be scientific! Instead of inventing - cite and refer to sources. Doesn't matter it's some unknown blog, a text file dumped on the i2p or shady Syrian news outlet. The objective is to make corporations beg people to read their agenda. If corporations sabotage YT on Firefox - there's Rumble, full of various materials corporations don't want You to see or share. If there's a paywall for American lies, there's no paywall for the Russian lies.
Corporations then will tempt users by trying to bribe them with a part of their power, pretending that these users can become corporations before the law. I don't know will any users still get caught on it, but recent MS representative talk about the non-corporate stuff in the Net being a "freeware" despite of the license should be sufficient to know that this bribe is another lie.